


Unsanctioned Departure

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Arent you proud of me, Banter, Camping, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, FinnPoe Vibes, I am, I hope everything is tagged correctly I was confused, M/M, Newt is Thanisson, Newt is kinda mean, One Shot, Rey shows up for one second, The Force Awakens AU, Thomas is a chaotic cinnamon bun, Thomas is a stormtrooper, like almost none, very little smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:40:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21739258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Thomas is a stormtrooper and Newt Thanisson is a petty officer for the First Order. Tired of having to hide their feelings for each other and horrified by the actions of the First Order, Thomas convinces Newt to defect so they can be together.Unedited, a little chaotic, and a totally new setting for me, but I thought you all might enjoy it anyway.
Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 56





	Unsanctioned Departure

“Oh thank god!”

Thomas crashed into Newt, flinging his arms around the thin man and smashing their lips together in what would more accurately be called a collision than a kiss. Especially because it was evident from the start that Newt was not reciprocating, his face frozen in shock which then quickly morphed into anger.

He put both hands on Thomas’s chest and roughly shoved him back.

“What do you think you’re doing?” He hissed. “For fuck’s sake, Thomas, the goddamn door is open!” He gestured sharply to the door leading from Newt’s tiny petty officer quarters to the deserted corridor, then tugged on the hem of his slick coal-black jacket to set his uniform aright. 

“I heard about the explosion on the bridge.” The words tumbled breathlessly out of him, and despite having stumbled back at Newt’s rough treatment Thomas was already reaching out to him again, needing to touch, to verify that the man was really standing in front of him unharmed.

“This is a _Resurgent_ -class Star Destroyer, there is more than one command center you complete and _utter_ tit.” Newt jabbed a finger into Thomas’s chest. Only Thomas could tell that beneath the cold rage-filled exterior Newt was, in fact, a little shaken. 

Thomas closed the distance and placed his hands on Newt’s shoulders.

“I’m just glad you’re alright.”

Newt’s gaze softened for the barest instant—so quick it was arguably a figment of Thomas’s imagination and desire—before he made that displeased hissing sound again and batted both of Thomas’s hands away. Without another word he stepped around the stormtrooper and crossed over to the threshold of the door, ducking his head out and looking either way before shutting it with a decisive _click_.

“Thomas,” he said, leaning against the door, his whip-thin posture that typically thrummed with a harsh and uptight energy sagging the barest fraction in the way it only did when he was alone with the other man, “You have to be more careful. If anyone finds out about this,” a vague gesture to encompass the space between them, “We’ll be separated. They’ll send you to reconditioning and then assign you to some backwater planet on the ass-end of the galaxy and I’ll never see you again. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not. I’m sorry.” This time Thomas waited, hands held softly at his sides, knowing Newt would come to him.

And he did, but again in that rigid and almost hateful stride, like each step was meant to punish the floor for a crime it had committed in a past life and for which it still owed him retribution. 

Newt lifted a pale long-fingered hand and flicked away an invisible speck of dust from Thomas’s shoulder, dark eyes critical and meandering as they took in Thomas’s recreational wear—just a muted grey shirt and trousers that softened and hid the outlines of muscles conditioned over years of combat training. 

Thomas caught Newt’s hand by the wrist and turned it so he could kiss the palm. A little sigh escaped Newt’s lips as his eyes fluttered briefly shut. It reminded Thomas suddenly and somewhat painfully of the many long months they had spent dancing around each other, afraid to initiate contact until the desperate wanting had nearly shattered them before they finally crashed in a frightful kinetic blaze.

Back when his only name had been TM-3250; before Newt had christened him as first Thomas and then, later, in frantic whispers beneath and above and within a cocoon of fisted bedsheets, _Tommy_.

“I wish I could just love you,” Thomas whispered into Newt’s wrist, afraid to meet his gaze. “Out in the open. All the time. I just want to be with you, Newt. I don’t want anything else.”

Newt sighed.

They’d had conversations like this before, of course. About Thomas’s doubts regarding the First Order, about how Thomas just wanted to snap his fingers and whisk them off into some fantasy land that didn’t exist.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t happen. This was their reality and Thomas had to deal with it and—

“You’re with me now,” Newt said, a sharp finality in his tone. Part of him wanted to step back and snatch his hand away but like always he was trapped in Thomas’s orbit, the man’s pull overcoming any decent sense of propriety he’d ever had. It angered him, it thrilled him, it softened him in ways he couldn’t begin to explain or comprehend.

Thomas, insatiable and physical and stupid and wonderful as always, was unbuttoning Newt’s jacket as he spoke, and for some incomprehensible reason Newt was letting him.

“It was a stormtrooper who escaped,” he said quietly, still not meeting Newt’s eyes as he slipped a hand beneath the now-open jacket, caressing his torso through his shirt. “From a different division. FN-2187.” 

Despite himself, Newt’s eyebrows ticked up at that.

“Alone?” He asked, mouth suddenly dry as Thomas pushed Newt’s jacket off of his shoulders and it fell carelessly to the floor. Suddenly Thomas’s mouth was adhering to his neck and Newt hissed at the sudden rush of sensation, head tipping back. 

“No,” Thomas whispered into the sensitive patch of skin, bestowing gentle kisses as his hands gripped Newt’s hips. “With a pilot. From the Resistance.” He nipped at Newt’s neck and Newt, aching and touch-starved and shattered and realizing only now how unbearably _lonely_ he was without Thomas, like a cold husk of a planet abandoned by its star, raised his hands to latch desperately onto Thomas’s shoulders.

Thomas walked him back until he was pressed flush against the wall, and Thomas against him.

“That could be us,” Thomas whispered again, his breath and the fluttering of his lips raising goosebumps on every inch of skin Newt possessed. “We could do it. I know we could.”

“I’m not a pilot,” Newt pointed out, trying not to gasp as Thomas bent his head and moved down to Newt’s collarbone, where he was free to leave as many marks as he’d like without it incriminating them both. 

“Mmmm.” Thomas was loathe to free up his mouth enough to speak, but eventually he did, murmuring into Newt’s collarbone, “I’ve had emergency training. It’s enough. It’ll be enough.” 

Tongue flicking out to lick at flushed skin. Hands pushing down into Newt’s waistband. Blood coursing through his veins, heartbeat pounding in his ears and suddenly every argument seemed infantile. Distracting. Delaying. Cowardice, when there was no room for such things under Thomas’s hands, beneath his questing lips.

Newt would rather die than lose this.

Breathing rapidly, his hands slid up to cup Thomas’s face just as Thomas finally pushed beneath the fabric of Newt’s boxers to gently palm him and the flood of pleasure-granting chemicals broke through the barrier and allowed him to say the words that were always dancing behind his typically cold and stiff, now warm and soft and pliant lips—

“I’ll follow you anywhere, Tommy.”

Somehow, through the disorienting haze that clouded and quickened and dominated his existence when he was with Thomas, Newt—ever vigilant, with the frantic and well-trained anxiety of an organism whose DNA had marinated in millions of years of heightened, honed, and frightfully reinforced prey drive—picked up on the sound of approaching footsteps.

They stopped in the corridor, just outside his door.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Newt hissed, breaking away from Thomas with a fractured gasp and whirling the other man around. Thomas had time for only a single protesting half-syllable laced with the despair of losing contact before Newt was shoving him bodily into the closet and slamming the door shut.

When his commanding officer breezed into the room a mere second later Newt’s uniform jacket lay in an untidy heap on the floor. His face was flushed and hair tousled, and a suspicious bit of grey material was sticking out of the closet, trapped in the hastily-closed door.

“Thanisson.” The superior officer looked him over with a raised eyebrow as Newt snapped a salute. His hand then immediately fell to his mouth where it hovered as he tried to hide, as inconspicuously as possible, his very red and kiss-swollen lips.

“Sir.”

“After the…incident, the powers that be have decided on an inspection of all officers’ quarters. One hour.” The man looked Newt over again, and his toes curled nervously in his boots. “Wanted all my men to be aware. Get yourself together, this place is a wreck.” A lip curl and eye-roll later the man was already heading for the door, sending a parting barb over his shoulder. “And report to medical after the inspection, you look like shit. Fever, I’d wager, and I don’t want whatever you have catching among the men.”

“Yes, sir.”

When the man finally departed, snapping the door shut in his wake, Newt nearly collapsed in relief. He held onto the counter behind him with one hand as if it were holding him up, running a hand through his hair.

By all the planets in all the star systems in the galaxy, that had been close.

“Uh, Newt?” The muffled voice came from behind the closet door and Newt flicked his gaze over to it, trying to calm his breathing. “There’s…there’s no handle on this side.”

Newt rolled his eyes and pressed his face against the closet, speaking into the seam between door and wall.

“Maybe I should just leave you in there.” He leaned against the door, crossing his arms. “When inspection rolls around I’ll say you’re an intruder. It wouldn’t even be a lie.”

“Babe,” Thomas chuckled, but even without that Newt could _hear_ his smile as Thomas’s voice pitched to something lower, more deliberate. “Stop wasting time. We’ve only got an hour and there are so _many_ things I want to do to you.”

Newt rolled his eyes again, but he was biting his lip as he suddenly stepped back to fling open the closet door, Thomas tumbling out and into his arms.

Thomas could be rash, but Newt was methodical to a fault, and he wasn’t about to agree to any half-cocked plan. Not when they had time—time to gather resources, formulate a course of action, determine backups for their backup plans to a level of redundancy that even Newt was eventually willing to concede was a madness of its own.

Strangely, Newt’s conviction never wavered.

Even Thomas expected it to; Newt saw the arguments in favor of their defection lined up like charges in a blaster rifle, but they went frustratingly unspent as Newt unwaveringly bent himself to the task of completing their secret preparations for departure.

Though there came a moment that seemed to stretch out into the horizon of time when everything was ready and yet neither of them moved to solidify a date and a time to set the plan in motion. When everything hung in the balance, when they risked discovery in the way that both of their quarters now held hidden caches of supplies—food rations and medical packs and clothing and beacons and errant technological necessities—when the weight of their decision made even their stolen moments of intimacy uncharacteristically heavy and heated and desperate and searching.

Starkiller Base decided them.

The _Finalizer_ lounged in a parking orbit around the planet/weapon and in the same suspended moment, in two different sections of the ship kilometers apart, Newt and Thomas were bridged by a shared horror as the searing red hell-light of ultimate destruction sliced through untold distances of empty space to split into a many-fingered menace that, through fire and unimaginable magnitudes of heat and dimension-spanning concussive force, rendered and scorched and finally snuffed out an entire system of inhabited planets.

Gigadeath.

They left that night.

Security systems stealthily bypassed.

Go-bags stashed in a recently decommissioned TIE fighter.

And two men in recreation dress walking nonchalantly through dimly-lit corridors.

Newt, of course, had the ship’s patrol schedules memorized. Unless there was some unforeseen disruption they shouldn’t run into a single soul on their way to the hangar—

Suddenly Thomas was yanking him back by the collar of his shirt behind a support beam.

Newt’s prey instinct demanded silence so he didn’t cry out or even gasp in surprise—simply folded into the shadows in a niche along the corridor wall, back pressed against Thomas’s until he could feel the other man’s rapidly-beating heart. Thomas pointed past him and Newt followed the line indicated by his accusatory finger until he saw the source of Thomas’s alarm.

A woman. A woman? A girl. Padding stealthily down these same halls, feet soundless on the shiningly immaculate surface of the Star Destroyer’s corridors, grey robes flowing in a dance of caution and urgency.

Who the hell—?

Clearly, she didn’t belong. And, still operating on that routine-beaten prey drive, without thinking twice Newt stepped forward and opened his mouth, ready to call out to her, accost her and apprehend her and by god _stop_ her from whatever devious plans she had in store for the only place he’d ever really called a home. Something in his cells singing out to him in a stress-pitched falsetto that if he _didn’t_ say something he’d pay for it later.

A hand clamped down over his mouth. Thomas jerked him back, Newt only able to release a muffled ‘hmph!’ of surprise.

“Are you crazy?” Thomas hissed in his ear. “She looks like she could break you in half.”

_Well that’s why I have you,_ Newt tried to communicate through his glare.

“We’re _leaving_ , Newt,” Thomas said, as if he could read Newt’s mind. “It doesn’t matter. It’s definitely not worth the risk of us getting caught.”

Newt harrumphed behind Thomas’s hand. Unfortunately, the other man was right. They were too far gone now to feign any sort of innocence, and every second they delayed multiplied their risk of failure.

He cast a final glance at the girl’s departing figure and then rolled his eyes, tugging at Thomas’s hand.

“Fine,” he hissed, when Thomas finally relinquished his hold. “But we’ve got to hurry. Someone’s going to notice her and send a patrol. The schedule’s bung now.”

There were a few close calls on the way to the ship, and each time the adrenaline spike drove Newt closer and closer to Thomas, until he was loathe to leave the other man’s shadow, until he felt his heart stuttering to a stop unless he felt Thomas’s body heat against his skin, until he’d threaded his fingers through Thomas’s and _refused_ to let go.

It didn’t matter if anyone saw them holding hands. If anyone saw them at all they were already done for.

Get in the ship.

Start it up. Shut down the ship-to-ship handshake subroutine. Disable the pilot ID confirmation. Untether from the hangar mooring.

Hand over the controls to Thomas.

Then, hang the fuck on.

Light.

Blasters, they were firing _blasters_ —

Breaking through the field that separated hangar from void space, like molecules pushing through gelatinous cell walls, thick and cloying and not _giving_ the way it should for a scheduled departure but—

Finally, breaking free of that sluggish hold, TIE fighter spinning from pent-up energies suddenly released, Newt shouting and Thomas gritting his teeth and squeezing his eyes shut against pulling and dipping and swooping and spiraling g-forces until—

Jarring. Impact. Heat and smoke clawing at their lungs and " _Thomas! Thomas! TOMMY—"_

Spiraling, down and down and down and the realization that there _was_ a down to spiral into—a planet, of course Newt had timed their departure for a pass-by of a habitable, breathable-class planet but as they entered the atmosphere Thomas knew they were going too fast and nothing he did, no matter how he pulled and coaxed and cajoled the controls there was no slowing their descent.

“Newt! NEWT!”

Newt wasn’t moving. He had been tossed from the ship on impact and was crumpled in an oddly small, frighteningly still heap some distance from the smoking wreckage of the pilfered TIE fighter. 

Thomas fought his way over to him, skittering across shrapnel, the broken bits of metal tearing at his pants and leaving several shallow gashes that welled immediately with pinprick drops of scarlet but he didn’t notice, too focused on Newt, _was he breathing he had to be alive please_ —

If this awful, crazy idea of Thomas’s had ended already in Newt’s death he was going to kill every living thing on this planet and that included himself.

No one had ever made the claim that stormtroopers were particularly well-adjusted individuals.

Thomas fell to his knees and rashly, stupidly, immediately grabbed Newt by the shoulders and hauled him onto his lap, hand running through sweaty, tousled, ash-darkened and possibly even slightly singed blonde hair. 

“Newt? Newt?!”

There was a trickle of dark, drying blood from a cut hidden somewhere in his hair that coursed down the side of his face inches from his right eye, still closed. His face was pale but he was always pale, wasn’t he? Thomas saw his chest rising and falling and his eyes scoured over the rest of him, taking in the rumpled and torn and smoke-stained civilian clothes they’d filched from a poorly-guarded storage locker as he searched for any obvious injuries. Still pawing through his hair like a madman, smoothing the tangled locks away from his face and avoiding the likely very tender and smarting source of the maroon streak of blood. 

So preoccupied with these given tasks that he didn’t realize for several seconds that Newt had opened his eyes to dark slits that glared up at him as he grumbled in a raspy and slurred voice:

“Idiot...”

“Newt! Thank god.” Thomas curved over him to draw the prone man into a crushing hug that earned him a decisive swat to his back.

“Off’a me!”

“Sorry, sorry.” Thomas let go and Newt slowly sat up, as if taking stock of the status of each and every joint of his leanly-muscled limbs on his way up. When he was fully sat up, his lower back still pressed against Thomas’s thigh, he reached a hand up and smacked Thomas lightly on his cheek. Thomas caught the wrist and pressed a fleeting kiss to his pulse. Newt rolled his eyes.

“Idiot,” he said again. Then, squinting around at the ravaged foliage and darkly-upturned soil of the churned earth in their immediate vicinity, his eyes finally landed on the twisted little lump that comprised the remains of their escape vessel and he let out a long and beleaguered sigh.

“A right mess we’re in, then,” he lamented. “Think they’re still after us?”

“I dunno, are we that important?”

“Not really.” Newt gave a shrug accompanied by a wince. “Might’ve assumed the worst—well, best, from their perspective.”

“Time to play dead?” Thomas grinned.

“Won’t be playing much longer, most like.”

“We’ve got rations.” Thomas’s gaze clouded with concern and he started inspecting Newt all over again. “Unless you’re hurt I don’t see the need for all that pessimism.”

“If you don’t like pess-mism” Newt seemed to have trouble with the word, “Not sure why you dragged me along in the first place.” Newt waved away Thomas’s seeking gaze. “M’fine, really. Got a bit of a twinge in the left leg, might’ve sprained it. Other’n being a little banged up I’m no worse for the wear. You?”

“A couple of scrapes,” Thomas said, after taking a moment to reflect on his own state, “but not bad, considering.” 

“Rations won’t last us more‘n a few weeks.” 

Thomas nodded, though he wasn’t really listening to the words so much as how they came out. Newt was still slurring and that made Thomas’s concern tick up a notch. 

“S’pose we could see if the ship’s computer—“

“On it!” Thomas scrambled to his feet when Newt made as if to get up. “You just stay right there. I think you have a concussion.”

“That’ll make two of us with brain damage, then.”

“I’ll see if there’s a town nearby.” Thomas waded over to the broken cockpit, reaching past splintered metal to fiddle with some miraculously still intact buttons on the console. A holo image leapt to life, grainy and distorted as it hung in the air in front of Thomas, the forest behind it a blurry background and blue light falling in a shimmery curtain over half of Thomas’s face.

First it was a sphere: the planet.

Then it zoomed in to their hemisphere.

Continent.

And finally, to this particular patch of forest which was apparently only a hundred miles or so inland from the coastline. A spinning red triangle hovered over their location, and with a little more dial-fiddling another marker popped up indicating the nearest population center.

Well, it could’ve been worse. A few days’ walk, probably. Maybe a week if the terrain or climate slowed them down.

And anyway Thomas was a bit relieved that they were, for the moment at least and to all appearances, isolated. It gave them time to breathe and get their bearings and hopefully concoct a passable lie about where they came from and who they were.

He punched the coordinates of the town into his wristband and retrieved their luckily intact bags before returning to Newt. The other man had laid back down and was frowning up at the sky with the back of one fisted hand pressed to his temple.

Thomas sat next to him, putting a hand on his knee.

“How ya feelin, babe?”

“Like this was a stupid plan and we’re gonna die.”

Thomas tsked, patting his knee.

“Oh ye of little faith.”

“What’re we gonna do, Thomas? How are we gonna survive? Who’s going to _hire_ us?”

Thomas chuckled.

“You’re worried about the job market?” 

“I’m worried about a lot of things.” Newt sounded tired. Thomas leaned over and gently ruffled his hair.

“You worry too much.” 

“And you not enough.” Newt slowly sat up, looking down at his hands. “It’s all gone, Thomas. Everything I’ve ever known and worked towards. We can never go back.”

“Do you regret it?”

Newt gave him a long look. Then he shook his head.

“No. Not at all. It’s just...sinking in, I guess. I’m tired, Tommy.” He rubbed his eyes, then seemed to marshal some of his dutiful strength as he clapped his hands briskly together. “Right, then. You found a town?”

Thomas nodded. 

“Let’s go.” 

“Are you sure you’re okay to travel?” Thomas eyed him doubtfully. Newt hadn’t even gotten to his feet yet since they’d crashed and Thomas was starting to suspect he was putting it off for some reason. 

“I’m fine.” Newt gathered his legs under him and Thomas scrambled to his feet, hands out and ready to catch the other man if he stumbled. Newt did stagger a bit as he got to his feet but he stood well enough on his own—until he abruptly turned around and vomited. 

Thomas winced.

“Sorry,” Newt said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve as he straightened. He took a deep breath and made the absurd gesture of tugging on his ragged and rumpled shirt as if he still wore a crisp uniform and to leave it even slightly askew was to risk a reprimand. Thomas found it oddly adorable.

“You definitely have a concussion,” Thomas said, in a hesitant sing-song-y voice of concern as Newt shouldered his bag. “Probably need to rest…”

Newt’s glare shut him up, and Thomas just shrugged. He knew that look, and it wasn’t worth the fight.

It was slow going.

The forest fought them every step of the way as they stumbled and tripped and slid on broken branches and fallen leaves and tangled undergrowth. Newt couldn’t remember the last time he’d been off the ship, Thomas had never been deployed somewhere so frustratingly wild. Newt was unsteady on his feet and kept unconsciously lifting a hand to his head in what Thomas was certain was a tell that he was currently sporting a raging headache. Thomas kept trying to reach out, to offer him support, but it was almost like they were back on the ship again. Newt batting his hands away, glaring, shuffling away, turning his shoulder, closing off.

They stopped before the sun went down, and Thomas started a fire, and it was all very quaint and rustic and touristy for a while. Newt fell asleep leaned up against a tall tree with softly splintering, fibrous red bark, and Thomas watched him in the orange-gold cast of the flickering firelight and wondered when he would be allowed to touch him again.

The next day was more of the same.

Newt said that his head felt better and Thomas grew more confident navigating in the unbroken wilderness. For the most part they walked in silence, only trading occasional warnings about a root jutting out or a patch of slick soil, Newt sometimes asking if they were still headed the right way, Thomas humoring him by checking the positioning system on his wristband.

Something had shifted between them, but hell if Thomas could put his finger on exactly what. Could you blame him? Stormtrooper training hadn’t exactly included a section on healthy relationships. And he knew that Newt wouldn’t talk about it even if he asked, so he didn’t ask. Instead defaulting to what he knew best, which was touch.

Fingertips grazing Newt’s elbow when he slipped on a matted patch of leaves.

Standing close enough that their shoulders brushed when they paused to get their bearings.

Passing Newt his lunch and holding on to the mug of soup for just a fraction too long so he could feel those long, pale fingers closing over his own.

It was the way he’d won Newt over to begin with. Insinuating himself, touch by micro-fraction of a touch, into the hardened shell of Newt’s personal space. Finding the gaps and wiggling in, deftly weaving himself into Newt’s physical existence until the other man began to unconsciously reciprocate. Standing just a few inches closer than he used to. Relaxing, however briefly—sometimes for no longer than a hummingbird’s wingbeat—whenever Thomas came into contact with him.

Until finally that night they were leaned up against the same tree, shoulders pressed together and Newt allowing Thomas to rest a hand on his thigh just above the knee.

“It’s not that I don’t—you know,” Newt said, again making that vague gesture between the two of them, and Thomas heard the words _love you_ laced like a chemical fog into the pause. 

“I know,” he said softly. He never wanted Newt to feel like he had to explain himself, or say those specific words for Thomas to understand the way the other man felt about him.

“I guess I’m just a creature of habit.” Newt shrugged. “That’s why I did so well there. You were always the one who wanted change. Now everything’s changed and it’s like, I don’t know what to do, or who I am anymore.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.” And Thomas decidedly disagreed with the assertion that Newt had ‘done well’ in the First Order, given his rather jumpy and anxiety-ridden demeanor, but that was an argument for another time. Or never. “And I feel the same way. Lost but…excited?” His hand squeezed Newt’s thigh. “I know I can handle anything as long as I’m with you.”

Later that night, Newt fell asleep with his head pillowed on Thomas’s shoulder and Thomas considered this progress.

The next day, the forest relented. There were still trees, but they were spaced out. The undergrowth all but disappeared, and Newt and Thomas found themselves following a stream that wound its way down a gradual decline.

Unbelievably clear water gurgled and bubbled and plinked and sloshed against cool, darkly-speckled time-smoothed rocks. Newt and Thomas rolled along with an unencumbered stride and every now and again Thomas looked over at Newt and smiled at him and Newt gave him a look that was both exasperated and guarded—a combination Thomas had long ago learned translated to fondness. Along with a flicker of something else.

After stopping for lunch Thomas caught sight of a smattering of river-bound slick-skinned creatures, each individual about the size of his palm if you didn’t count the length of their legs which were seemingly designed to act as coiled springs and propel them in erratic hops among the slippery wet rocks.

Silently, he caught Newt’s eye—earning a raised eyebrow as Newt seemed to ask without words what lunacy Thomas was about to thrust himself into—and then dropped into a crouch, approaching the nearest target with all the stealth he possessed, with was admittedly not much at all. Still, it was just about enough.

Thomas flung himself down just as the little creature jolted forward and he landed sprawled half in the water, hands grasping at the wriggling, slimy little thing that was croaking incessantly against the mistreatment while Thomas laughed, hoarse and breathless, head bowed.

Then he flipped himself over and held up his prize for Newt’s viewing pleasure. 

“See, Newt!” He laughed, fighting to keep his grip. “We don’t even need to go to town, I’ll hunt for you!”

“If you think I’m eating that,” Newt said dryly, with a dramatic eye roll, “then you’re more delusional than Hux.”

Thomas abruptly lost the battle with his quarry and it slipped from his grasp to flail and land directly in the middle of his face before pushing off from his nose with an offended croak. Thomas yelped in surprise, then sputtered and rubbed his nose.

When he opened his eyes and looked at Newt he saw that flicker again.

He didn’t realize what it was until later that day, when they’d resumed their hike and Thomas—feeling his oats, as the old saying went—had started a little nudging war with Newt, dancing near the blonde man to gently prod him in the ribs with his elbow before pirouetting away to walk backwards ahead of him while grinning full in Newt’s face.

He didn’t even see it coming. One moment Newt was all exasperation and solemnity, like always. Hands gripping the shoulder straps of his bag, eyes rolling at Thomas’s antics while he stolidly looked ahead, acting as if there was some punishment to be had for showing the slightest sign of amusement. Thomas spun around again to fall into stride beside Newt and before he knew it he was toppling over and into the stream.

A sharp shout of surprise was eclipsed by a solid few seconds of flailing and sputtering before Thomas got his hands under him and pushed himself up, shaking his head and sending water droplets flying in all directions like a shaggy and exuberant dog. He breathed out a laugh, brain catching up to the fact that Newt had _pushed_ him, and he turned to look back at the other man—

Only for his brain to short-circuit and his heart to freeze mid-beat.

Newt was looking at him and he was smiling.

Newt was _smiling_.

“You’re smiling,” Thomas said stupidly, unable to think of anything else despite his current position laying full-out in the water, clothes utterly soaked. He pushed himself to his knees and then to his feet, striding out of the stream and standing dripping on the grassy shore.

Newt turned his face away, looking down at the ground but the little smile stayed in place like it had been carved there.

“So,” he said, deflecting.

“You don’t do that,” Thomas pressed. In contrast to Newt, Thomas was uncharacteristically serious as he took a step forward, and then another, regarding Newt as if he were an immensely intricate puzzle that Thomas was on the cusp of solving for good. 

“It’s because you’re being an idiot.”

“Nah, that’s not it,” Thomas shook his head, taking another step forward. “I’m always an idiot, but I’ve never seen you smile before.” Cocking his head, regarding with pleased interest the way the blonde man’s cheeks flushed with embarrassment.

“…You’re happy out here, aren’t you?”

Newt shrugged, but Thomas saw the way he bit his lip to keep from smiling even wider.

When Thomas stepped closer Newt was the one to initiate contact, raising a hand to graze lightly over his sodden shirt.

“That was stupid of me,” he said. “You’re going to be soaked all day. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” Thomas grabbed his wrist and held it, not moving, eyes questing over Newt, drinking in every line of his body, every slant of his posture, every muscle held taut or loose. His thumb came up to press hesitantly against the upturned corner of Newt’s mouth and when the other man leaned in to the touch instead of shying away Thomas couldn’t help himself any longer.

He hooked his hand behind Newt’s neck and dove forward for their first kiss in freedom, and Thomas knew that he had found his paradise here, with Newt.


End file.
